We explore how changes in ownership and managerial control affect the productivity and profitability of producers. Using detailed operational, financial, management, and ownership data from the Japanese cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century, we find a more nuanced picture than...

Mitsubishi Corporation (Mitsubishi Shoji), a trading company under Mitsubishi Zaibatsu, increased its sales rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s, and threatened to catch up with Mitsui & Co. (Mitsui Bussan), the largest trading company in prewar Japan. In this paper, we constructed the data that...

In the late 1940s, the Japanese economy transited to a market economy from an economy under the government planning and control, which had continued since the period of the Sino-Japanese War. This paper explored the impact of the transition on the micro-aspect of the economy, focusing on the...

This paper investigates the extent, determinants, and implications of the political connections of firms at the peak of democracy in prewar Japan, identifying a firm as politically connected if one of its directors was simultaneously a member of the House of Representatives. We analyze the data...

Because of the unstable financial market after World War I, the Japanese financial system experienced a wave of bank mergers, which resulted in an increase in bank scale and the development of branch banking. In this paper, we explored the implications of the expansion of branch banking, using...

After the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Japan annexed Korea in 1910. We exploit this event as a natural experiment to investigate the effect of improved market access on the population growth. It is found that the tariff reduction raised the growth rate of population, and...

Japan experienced high growth of TFP following World War II. This paper studies the sources of this technological growth and documents the role played by different government policies in achieving such growth. We find that in nonagricultural sectors, TFP growth occurred at first through the...

This paper overviews the industrial organization in Japan between the two World Wars. In this period, the change in the industrial structure gave a substantial impact on the industrial organization. On one hand, development of the heavy industries, which had been highly concentrated, raised the...

This paper addresses a fundamental question on corporate governance, "What did corporate executives, outside directors and large shareholders really do ?" Although this question is essential, it has not been fully addressed in the literature, basically due to the constraint of relevant...

This paper investigates how ownership changes affect the plant performance, focusing on the cotton spinning industry in early twentieth century Japan, where many plants experienced ownership changes. Through analyses of detailed plant-level data, it is revealed that, after ownership changes,...